why effective communication skills are important for I. I mean me.
Last semester I read a module which I enjoyed tremendously, mainly because the teacher was so great. Unlike other teachers, his 1st priority was to help us to learn, and thus the way he taught was very different. Towards the end of the sem, some of us went to his office for consultation, and after clearing our questions, he went on to talk about more general stuff. Then he turned to face me and praised me (although I can't remember his exact words), but said that there was 1 thing I needed to work on: communication.
Over the years, I inevitably had to interact with my fellow humans and there were many occasions when I thought I had a brilliant idea, but somehow I wasn't able to convince people to adopt it. Or maybe I was teaching someone a difficult concept, say for physics tuition, and I would become tongue-tied trying to explain it clearly. And of course, I knew I wasn't the most eloquent of speakers.
Yet, it was only when my favourite teacher gave me his advice did it really strike me how important good communication skills would be to help smoothen my future path. I have so many ideas to share, passion for so many causes, and want to help people in so many ways, but I need to communicate with people to succeed. Therefore in this course, I hope I will be able to pick up the necessary communication skills to do all of these much better.
Over the years, I inevitably had to interact with my fellow humans and there were many occasions when I thought I had a brilliant idea, but somehow I wasn't able to convince people to adopt it. Or maybe I was teaching someone a difficult concept, say for physics tuition, and I would become tongue-tied trying to explain it clearly. And of course, I knew I wasn't the most eloquent of speakers.
Yet, it was only when my favourite teacher gave me his advice did it really strike me how important good communication skills would be to help smoothen my future path. I have so many ideas to share, passion for so many causes, and want to help people in so many ways, but I need to communicate with people to succeed. Therefore in this course, I hope I will be able to pick up the necessary communication skills to do all of these much better.
The Phoney Bustard carpped on11:57 AM
5 Comments:
Hi Yi Han,
Thanks for the sharing!
A very interesting start to your post, sharing with us why developing effective communication skills is important to you.
Your post is very well thought-out, in that by sharing with us the background as to why effective communication is important to you, you've captivated your audience, encouraging us to read on. The next section where you discussed your personal experience of its relevance in various contexts served to reinforce the point you want to make.
I like the post. Thanks for the great effort!
Just to note, when posting, take note of the 7Cs. I noticed some errors (punctuation, expressions for example) in your post. You may like to work with a blogging buddy for the e-portfolio - let's talk more about this tomorrow.
Ms. Lim
Overall, a good post.
I liked the way you summarised the the reasons you think communication skills are important for you in the second paragraph. You somehow managed to put the reason and its example in the same sentence.
I feel a little sad that effective communication is so important. Imagine the number of brilliant ideas that go unused because the person is unable eloquently propose or defend his ideas.
I hope you manage to learn a lot of useful skills from this course. You and me both.
Hi Yihan!
You've continued from your real rant-about-life blog! I've looked through a few of your entries and found them interesting.
I give physics tuition too! I can totally empathize with your difficulties in clarifying concepts. Sometimes the wrong idea is just so deeply ingrained in the student that it's difficult to pinpoint and weed out. I usually end up making my student do question after question while explaining the rationale behind each step. Hopefully, with sufficient repetition, the message gets through.
What do you think? Is repetition a form of effective communication? Seems like it can be, eh?
Hi Yi Han, thanks for sharing some of your personal stories in your post =) I think your favourite teacher is really a very good communicator to be able to convey his sincerity as an educator; which is to help you learn. I understand how is it like when we just cannot find the right words to explain to students during tuition. I experienced it before and I was determined to prevent it from happening again. So before the next tuition session, I thought of the possible questions that my student would have and how I could clarify his doubt using the best words. And it worked! He could understand my explanations thereafter. Thus, I think adequate preparations are a key to helping us become more effective communicators. Regarding how we can convince people about our ideas, I think it is important we let them feel our confidence as we speak. I guess our nonverbal cues play a part in convincing them too. Hope our course can let us learn more about persuading people as well!
Hello Yi Han!
Thanks for sharing this anecdote with us.
Just this morning, my flavour science class had a guest lecturer from the flavour industry. He is obviously a very knowledgeable person, and is probably an expert in his field of flavour analysis, but throughout the 2h lecture, but he was pretty much just mumbling to himself and avoiding eye contact with the class. That's pretty sad, eh? Thank goodness he's only a guest lecturer!
I hope our communication skills will improve by leaps and bounds by the end of the semester!
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